Keith Haring’s Painted Cars Head to New York Before Crystal Bridges Exhibition
Two automobiles covered in Keith Haring’s imagery will anchor a New York exhibition this month, offering a rare chance to see the artist’s visual language translated onto car bodies rather than canvas or paper. “Keith Haring: In the Street” runs from April 10 to 19 at Free Parking in New York City and will feature a 1963 Buick Special and a 1971 Land Rover Defender III, both painted top to bottom with Haring’s barking dogs, babies, snakes, mushroom clouds, and other recurring motifs.
The cars belong to collector Larry Warsh, whose CART Department describes itself as “a cultural platform devoted to the automobile as an artistic and social artifact.” Free Parking, the exhibition space where the vehicles will be shown, is part of that curatorial framework. Alongside the two cars, the exhibition will include original artworks by Keith Haring (1958–1990) and a series of conversations with artists, writers, and friends of the artist.
The New York presentation also serves as the launch for Keith Haring in 3D, a new book edited by Warsh and Glenn Adamson. That publication is more than a companion volume: it is also the exhibition catalog for a larger Haring show opening at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, on June 6, 2026, and running through January 25, 2027.
Haring has remained a durable market presence since his death from AIDS at 31, but the current wave of attention has widened beyond auction results and brand collaborations. By placing two decorated vehicles at the center of the project, this exhibition underscores how Haring’s work continues to move between art, design, and public culture with unusual ease — and how his imagery still reads as immediate, graphic, and unmistakably his own.
